The Christmas Lobbies of Jones Street Nob Hill

The peak of Nob Hill is at the intersection of Sacramento and Jones streets, behind Grace Cathedral. Moving north from there on Jones it plateaus into a flat block of apartment buildings that look like the ones on Fifth Avenue or Central Park West in New York.

The buildings have big names, like Crest Royal and the Comstock, and polished lobbies. They do it up tall with Christmas trees and as long as you don’t get too close to check if the trees are real, nobody minds the lobby-gawking.

This is one in a series on apartment lobbies of San Francisco. The idea is owed to Ed Ruscha’s series “Twenty-Six Gasoline Stations,” 50 years ago.